Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MA

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Sociology and Anthropology

Committee Chair

Corey Colyer

Committee Co-Chair

Joshua Woods

Committee Member

Joshua Woods

Committee Member

Jason Manning

Abstract

There exist a criminology of firearms and an epidemiology of firearms use, but little in the way of a sociology of U.S. firearm ownership. Most social science study of firearms concerns illicit gun use and the harm that use produces. Compared to this body of work, little has been done to explore the culture of legal gun ownership. A few social scientists have attempted to change this by contributing their own interpretations of what a sociology of U.S. gun ownership might look like. Professor David Yamane, in doing just this, has posited a cultural model of contemporary gun ownership he calls Gun Culture 2.0. According to this model, Gun Culture 1.0, which existed from the founding of the nation until around the end of the 20th century, revolved around hunting and later, recreational and sporting use of firearms. Over the last few decades, this central core of U.S. gun culture began to shift towards one that centered upon self-defense and personal protection, evincing a militarization of civilian gun culture. This new, defense-oriented gun culture has been termed Gun Culture 2.0, and its development and presence has been demonstrated through content analyses of gun media publication advertisements and is supported by survey and self-report data. This thesis will attempt to determine if Yamane’s Gun Culture 2.0 translates from print media (the subject of the original content analyses) to digital media (namely, the social media presences of the same or similar gun publications), by replicating Yamane et al.’s content analysis methodology using the Instagram images of two major gun periodicals, Guns & Ammo and Guns, as the units of analysis. The concepts of culture, gun culture, and the possible causes of the findings will be fully developed in the final thesis.

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